I went out on a hunch and dismissed the fact that “The Crazies” sounded like a really bad movie title and checked it out last night anyway. It was a mix of fulfilling and exceeding expectations. It was a mix of an American “28 Days Later,” “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and some 70’s B-movie elements. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked this re-imagining of the 1973 George Romero movie. (He was an Executive Producer on this one. Don’t ask me what they do, though.)
The basic premise is that the sheriff (played by the dreamy Timothy Olyphant) and his doctor wife start to notice the people in their small midwest town start acting a little bizarre. Wandering aimlessly with this crazy look in their eyes performing random acts of violence. One such man is incarcerated and the longer he’s in his cell, the more he looks like a really old apple. Just a bloody mess! They’re not quite zombies, because they’re still alive and have a memory, and they are not mindless animated bodies like some undead creature. And once they’re dead, they’re dead. They’ve just got some real anger management issues. The small farming community atmosphere adds to the creepiness of it all. Everyone knows everyone… everyone has a barn and a really large shed for storing farming equipment, and it seems they all live about five miles away from each other. It’s kind of a nice change, since there tends to be a lot of pretty, shiny people in hollywood horror movies. If you’ve ever been afraid of some good ol’ boys running after you with pitchforks, shotguns and torches, you know how creepy they already are sans a case of “the crazies.” It reminded me of those kinds of movies you watch late at night as a kid on a Saturday night like “The Exorcist” or “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” for the first time. You were a kid wanting to have a good time and at some point you just wonder, “Who the hell would make a movie like this?”
There were a couple of moments in the movie when I felt it kind of started to slow down, but considering how much action was in it, I am forgiving it. The only thing I can say that I really didn’t like, was that for about ten minutes, they decided to do the played-out “let’s shake the camera and make it seem more realistic” thing. I thought that’s what home movies were for.
There’s some severe gore going on also. I don’t think of things like this, but because my boyfriend is so sensitive to stuff like this, I tend to look out for it now. Be aware of the volume of blood in this one. It had some fun and disturbing moments. I had a flashback of Madonna’s “Oh, Father” video during a funeral home showdown. It freaked me out so much that I actually started to laugh. And I’m sure some would say it was simply silly, but I thought it was sheer genius that they had a major fight scene in a carwash, with the car wash running, and people in the car with no where else to go. One death happened so quickly I was left going, “no, that’s not possible, she was alive just a minute ago.”
So check it out! It’s either a pretty good movie, or I just have a case of “The Crazies” myself. 
